So, I felt the need to take a break from life and do some gaming today, and I happened to remember that I hadn't played one of my favorite games in a while.

Tradewinds: Legends is a game about life in a mythical Far East in which you trade for items like salt, tea, indigo, and parchment (and other stuff, too), solve tasks given to you by various city rulers, and fight off pirates with increasingly powerful ships. Already sounds neat, right? Well, it gets better. There are four characters you can play as, and each of them has their own story/quest and different tasks to solve. One of the characters? Just happens to be a gay man named Hassan Tazere.

Okay, so they never flat out *say* he's gay, but his quest is to search for his 'beloved shield-brother' Omar, a character who refers to him as 'amesri' -- that means 'lover' -- and there are all sorts of little winks and nudges and friendly, warm-hearted jokes to make sure you *know* that you're playing as a gay man. A *fabulous* gay man. Who's really pretty damned hot.

BUT IT GETS BETTER.

Once you defeat the game as one of the four primary characters, you get to make up your *own* character -- there's a whole separate quest for made-up characters, btw -- and, among many other choices for your character's look, you can be a FAT BLACK WOMAN. One who is NOT MOCKED FOR HER LOOKS, EVEN.

I think you can see why this is one of my favorite games, and why I keep coming back to it.

I really don't understand why there aren't more games like this, but I'm sure glad there's one.

As an aside, I play as a member of Shockwave Unlimited, which has hundreds of flash games of various types (they're always getting new ones). You can play all of them for one pretty reasonable membership fee. I've been a member for about two years now, and have found it to be entirely worth the cost.